Speed of Light
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Nobuta is left by herself.


**Title: **Speed of Light  
**Universe:** Nobuta wo Produce  
**Theme/Topic:** N/A  
**Rating:** PG  
**Character/Pairing/s:** Nobuko, Shuuji, Akira  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** Spoilers for the end of the series like WOAH. Also, OOC times a billion.  
**Word Count:** 994  
**Summary:** Nobuta is left by herself.  
**Dedication:** Nicole- I actually wrote this for your birthday and then I think I hated it too much to post it, and now I just found it again after what, 5 months? I still hate it, but it's kind of nice to find finished fic lying around your computer randomly.  
**A/N:** Wow this is old like dirt. I probably got all the characters wrong too. But this is what happens when I try birthday fic for a series I don't remember the details to all too well. XD It's kind of nice to find something to just throw up in a post though. LOL  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

Nobuko thought that maybe she would be lonely after they left. 

Sure, she knew that at the very least she'd be _okay_, but she was pretty certain _okay_ was an entirely different thing from _lonely_ in the grand scheme of things (or at least, from what little she knew of the grand scheme of things), and that you could probably be both lonely and okay at the same time if you absolutely had to be.

So when Akira asked if she would be okay on her own as he was about to leave, she put on her brave face and told him she would be, leaving out the part about being lonely too, because she didn't want either he or Shuuji to worry about her anymore, even just a little bit.

They'd already worried so much on her behalf as it was, after all.

And so she'd been resolved to stay positive no matter what, and had even done a quiet, "Nobuta Power!" to herself right there in the middle of the airstrip as she'd watched Akira's helicopter take off, whisking him away to join Shuuji on the coast. She stood on the ground staring up into the sky until she couldn't see the helicopter anymore even when she squinted, and once it was long gone, she told herself that while she was probably going to be a little bit lonely now that the two of them had left, she could at least do her best to be okay in the meantime, so they wouldn't have to worry.

Small steps. Akira called her the kind of person who took small steps, like one of those neat wind-up toys that little kids sometimes got in gashapon dispensers when they behaved in the super market and didn't beg their moms for candy every five seconds. Not the robot kind of gashapon though, but more, the cute kind. Like a puppy one and definitely not a Gundam one, even if the Gundam ones were amazingly fun and had cool little guns and everything (Akira had twenty of them).

She wasn't sure what he'd meant by all of that exactly, but the gist of it seemed to be that he believed that she was the kind of person who kept moving forward all on her own no matter what, and so she took hold of that part of his long and confusing description and held it close to her heart whenever she thought the world might be trying to overpower her again.

Because she wanted to make them proud, even if she was by herself now and resigned to being a little bit lonely.

For the time being, she told herself it was okay to just be…okay. From there, small steps forward—as many as it took. That was her "Nobuta Power."

However, her resolve—while admirable— didn't exactly go according to plan.

But only because she was lonely for approximately two days.

And then her cell phone buzzed.

_Text from: Akira_

"**_Hiiiiii!!! Guess what? Guess what? Go ahead…guess!"_**

She barely had the time to text back a tentative, _"What?"_ before another message arrived.

_Text from: Shuuji_

"_Whatever Akira sent you just now, ignore it." _

Then:

_Text from: Akira_

"_Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! Again. Hi! Hihihihihihihihi! Hhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiii! Haha that's easy to type. You didn't guess! But that's okay, I'll tell you anyway. Shuuji wore a dress today! His legs are white like paper. And thin like paper! He has origami legs!"_

She blinked.

_Text from: Shuuji_

"_It was for a FUNDRAISER the idiot volunteered me for. I swear I don't do those sorts of things for fun. Tell him to stop text messaging you; you're probably really busy." _

She wasn't really, and responded to Shuuji's message with a polite, _"I'm sure you looked very nice."_

_Text from: Akira_

"_Haha every time I send you a message Shuuji gets that little Vee in his forehead that makes him look like an old man! I bet he's gonna go bald. Hey, what'd you have for lunch?"_

She messaged back, "_Onigiri."_

_Text from: Shuuji_

"…_are you teasing me?"_

She smiled a little. _"No, I'm sure you really looked nice."_

_Text from: Akira_

"_My fingers hurt. I had yakisoba pan. I think it was kind of old. I can see the ocean from our school. Was it salmon?" _

She responded with: _"You type fast. Don't get sick. It must be nice. Yes."_

And then the messages stopped for a bit, but that was fine because she could almost see the two of them in her head now instead, and thought to herself that maybe they'd stopped messaging her because Shuuji had had enough of Akira's snickering over the LCD display of his phone and had tackled the other boy, demanding to know what was so funny. There would probably be tickling involved somewhere along the line from there, and after a while the both of them would forget what they'd been arguing about in the first place because they'd be too busy laughing and breathless and with their hair messy and all over their faces. Then they'd have to call a truce so they could fix it, because Shuuji hated it when his hair got into his mouth, even though Akira assured him that it tasted fine. Like strawberries, because Shu-u-ji-ku-un used delicious shampoo.

The image made her laugh a little and look down at her phone again, made her feel like each tiny step forward she made on her own was somehow less daunting than the one before if only because she knew they'd be behind her all the way, no matter how far apart they had to be in the interim.

After a while, she received two more messages.

_Text from: Shuuji_

"_Nobuta, Power!"_

_Text from: Akira_

"_Kon!" _

She smiled to herself when she read them, and was relieved to discover that she didn't miss Shuuji and Akira nearly as much as she thought she would.

But then again, they'd never left her.

**END**


End file.
